The affected human population -- Belarus was worst affected -- has been slammed. Human health has declined by every measurable factor, including IQ level.

You will notice that cardiovascular disease is one of the most prevalent issues. Children have clearly been hit the hardest. It appears that radiation vastly speeds up the aging process.

The overall picture is scary. The people of Belarus are basically doomed -- because it appears that there is no diminution with time. Things are getting worse -- in a word, regressing. The Japanese may face a similar bleak future. MHG

ECRR: Chernobyl 20 Years on. The Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident

This is a summary of Chapter One of the ECRR book. It was prepared as part of LLRC's complaint to the BBC's Editorial Complaints Unit about a documentary, Nuclear Nightmares transmitted 13th July 2006 as part of the BBC's science output.

The following is not intended to be scientifically robust — it's just a guide to the contents. For detail please refer to the ECRR 2006 or the original researchers. The health conditions are listed in the order they appear in the book. The presence of a condition here indicates that the parameter has worsened since the accident and many of the studies report a dose dependent relationship.

Psychological diseases correlate with levels of radioactive pollution. There is a steep and continuing increase in diseases of the nervous system, e.g. congenital convulsive syndrome, brain circulation pathology, general neurological diseases, short-term memory loss, deterioration of attention function in school-children.

In adults there is growing evidence of a syndrome marked by deteriorating memory and motor skills, occurrence of convulsions, and pulsing headaches. This is caused by the destruction of brain cells and in the region has been dubbed Chernobyl dementia.

Diseases of the cardio-vascular system and blood are one of the most common consequences of the Chernobyl radioactive pollution:- anaemia, illnesses of the blood circulation system, arterial hypertensia or hypotensia, disturbances of heart rhythm and digestive systems, macrocitosis of lymphocytes, diseases of the blood and circulatory organs in adults, early atherosclerosis and ischemic heart disease, leucopenia, infringement of the blood supply in legs, changes in abundance and activity of leukocytes.

There is much evidence correlating fallout levels with endocrine/hormone diseases, e.g. incidence rate for Type 1 diabetes mellitus in Belarus.

Similarly thyroid gland diseases (autoimmune thyroiditis, thyrotoxicosis, diabetes etc.). In 1993 more than 40 % of the surveyed children in the Gomel area of Belarus had an enlarged thyroid gland. Experts think up to 1.5 million people in Belarus are at risk of pathology of the thyroid gland.

In some of the Chernobyl-polluted territories immune systems are compromised, with changes to cellular and humoral immunity, decreased maintenance T- and B- lymphocytes, reduced resistance to infections and other diseases, raised frequency and expressiveness of tonsillitis, lymphadenopathies and lowered resistance to cancer.

In the radioactively polluted territories the typical consequence of infringement of the immune system appears as an immuno-deficiency. An increase in frequency and intensity of both acute and chronic diseases is observed everywhere in the Chernobyl polluted territories. Sometimes the weakening of the immune system in these radioactively polluted territories is referred to as Chernobyl AIDS.

There is accelerated ageing among the people in radioactively polluted territories in the Ukraine: their biological age exceeds their actual age by 7 - 9 years. In highly polluted territories in Belarus the mean age of men and women who died from heart attacks was 8 years younger than the average across Belarus.

The array of diseases commonly considered exclusive to the elderly is now typical for children in all of the heavily polluted territories. The immune system activity of these children is similar to the type of immune system activity experienced in old age. The pathology of the digestive system epithelium in children from the polluted areas of Belarus also shows similarities with elderly people.

There are increases in children’s general morbidity, and increases in rare illnesses in the Chernobyl polluted territories of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia; It is clear that children in heavily radio-polluted territories really do suffer, to a much greater degree, from a variety of diseases.

Total child morbidity in Ukraine increased by 2.9 times between 1986 and 2001, newborn morbidity in Belarus increases year-on-year at a rate of 9.5% with greatest increases in the most polluted Gomel area. The spectrum of children’s non-cancer illnesses in the polluted territories includes lowered birthweight in those irradiated in utero in Ukraine, reduced head circumference in newborns in the polluted territories of Ukraine and Belarus, (this is known from Hiroshima also and is recognised as a radiation teratogenic effect), infringements of the rate of physical development in those irradiated in utero, premature birth more common in the polluted territories of Belarus, delayed rate of growth in the radioactively polluted parts of Belarus.

Respiratory system diseases occurred everywhere in the polluted territories and tend to correlate with levels of radioactive pollution:- asphyxia was observed in half of the 345 surveyed newborns irradiated in utero in Ukraine (presumably this was a study of peri-natal mortality). Other pathologies were latent bronchospasm, bronchial asthma, chronic bronchitis, chronic nasopharyngeal pathology, acute respiratory diseases.

Cardiovascular system diseases in children occurred more frequently in the polluted territories, including infringements of cardiac rhythm, infringements of vegetative regulation of cardiac activity, arterial hypertension, reduced numbers of B- and T-lymphocytes, lymphopenia, brachycardia, lymphoid hyperplasia, haematological disease, heart conductivity, and reduced elasticity of arterial vessels even in apparently healthy children.

Dental diseases in children are more frequent in the Chernobyl radioactively polluted territories. The frequency of some dental diseases correlates with levels of radioactive pollution.

Congenital malformations. Increased rates of teratogenic effects reported all over Europe, with a dose dependent relationship found in a Bavarian study. In Europe there were also widespread increases in still birth, premature birth, low birth weight, Down's Syndrome, perinatal and neonatal deaths, and reduced birth rate. In Belarus, according to the Belarus National Genetic Monitoring Registry, there were post-Chernobyl increases in anencephaly, spina bifida, cleft lip, cleft palate, polydactyly, limb reduction, oesophageal atresia, anorectal atresia and multiple malformations. Many of the authors explicitly state that these phenomena are radiogenic. One, a researcher known for her caution, says only a third of congenital deformities of the face and jaw could be attributed to radiation. But it is a third, and those which are so attributed are said to be anomalously severe.

The proportion of children with impaired intellectual development is consistently greater in polluted areas. Irradiated children have not kept pace with other children. Disorders of intellectual development in children irradiated in utero in the polluted territories are described as the most tragic consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe’s impact on health. The ECRR 2006 book has an entire chapter on the topic. Its author observes that the official French agency IRSN has recognised that the Central Nervous System is radiosensitive, while the Chernobyl Forum 2005 report has many gaps and even errors on mental, psychological and CNS effects, and even misrepresents WHO findings. Children irradiated in utero whose mothers had been evacuated or who lived in a zone contaminated with between 5 and 40 Ci/km2, suffered a greater frequency of neurotic disorders, CNS pathology and delay of mental development, compared with children in the less polluted areas of Belarus. The depression of intellectual development was massively greater in the irradiated group than in the controls; pathologies include neurotic disorders, asthenic syndrome, vegetative dystonia, CNS organic pathology, delayed mental development, EEG pathology, delayed development of speech, lowered psycho-emotional development, low IQ indices, deviations in mental development, memory impairment, immaturity for school, organic pathology of the brain, decreased and delayed psychomotor development, epilepsy and epilepsy-related conditions, and schizophrenia.

All of these things you quote are late effects, things that happened years or decades after the incident. Oh, and none of the things listed in that very inclusive list is stroke.

The section you highlighted on children having the same illnesses as elderly, only references immune system activity and gastrointestinal lining.

There is still no evidence of an accute spike in stroke or cerebrovascular disorders incidence rates. There is however evidence for such a spike following severe earthquakes.